on love arriving unannounced

so overwhelmed by the love my little poem received, i wanna cry

See, in the correct genre and the correct context these are all absolutely brilliant.

These could be Douglas Adams quotes.

Dr. Gachey with foxglove, 1890

Some of Van Gogh’s best work was done during a period of his life that he spent in a hospital being treated for his mental health problems. I could be wrong but I think Starry Night was among those.

This is consistently the case. Creators tend to do their best work when they are in a healthy place and receiving proper treatment and not being self destructive in their efforts to cope. Go figure.

All our experiences, good and bad, inform what we create, but suffering is not the price of great art. Suffering is what prevents artists from completing great art.

(I bring to mind this @tkingfisher / Ursula Verson quote about once a week <3)

How we weigh an octopus!

Religious art leaves out the best part and it’s such a goddamn shame. Livestock, Agriculture and Food is an integral part of any culture and we all need to be pushing for more realistic sheep in religious art. #FATTAILSFORJESUS

“How think ye? If a man have a hundred sheep and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains and listen for the clappeth of it’s itinerant cheeks?” - Matthew 18:12, the bible

CLAPPETH….

I made this post a long time ago and never posted the follow up post, so here it is. Additional info on Fat tail sheep

Fat tailed sheep is not a single specific breed of sheep. It’s a catchall word like “Health care worker”.

There’s tons and tons of different breeds. They all store fat in their tails, but fall into two main categories: WIDE tails and LONG tails

Wide tails store fat in the rump area and have no visible tails.

Long tails store fat in the tail itself, which vary in length in different breeds. In the olden days, people took pride in breeding sheep with the longest tail. They are not so popular today as it’s hard to find a decent tail cart on Amazon.

Speaking of Tail carts, they come in different styles and designs. We dont have any that are actually preserved, but old drawing of them show different wheels harnesses.

Some of them are literally just skateboards

Back in the day, breeding sheep with long dragging tails was all the rage. Nowadays different tails types have been developed to prevent them from dragging their tails on the ground. Such as the “folded tail” or the “Only fat at the base” Tail

Despite fat tail sheep being the most common sheep breeds in the world, most people in the west have never heard of them. The West likes Wool Sheep. Fat tails are strictly meat sheep and have little useful wool. They also do poorly in colder climates

There’s a huge community of shepherds on youtube that script, choreograph and shoot elaborate videos for their sheep complete uplifting music to highlight their best qualities (for sale and stud) It is fantastic. Such as this one:

People kept bringing up Fat Bottomed Girls. Ya’ll are wrong. These are fat bottomed BOYS. Sheep are often continuously bred, so the females are constantly getting pregnant, giving birth and nursing.

That’s very hard on the body, so they can’t build up as much fat as the boys.

The fattest sheep, the ones with the truly VAST tails, rocking them little carts are ALWAYS males.

This is why the Bible specifically states that ONLY the rumps of the Males are to fit to be offered to the lord……

Picture: God desiring the tail

“And he shall offer of the sacrifice of the peace offering an offering made by fire unto the LORD; the fat thereof, and the WHOLE rump” -Leviticus 3:9

I mean… look.

Arguably these are just minor details and doesnt matter….

But beyond it’s teachings the bible is also a work of literature about life in the ancient world. And on some level these kinds of small details bring a sort of richness to these depictions of real…

Ancient people bred out sheep with huge butts, took the largest sheep butts, set them on fire and prayed over the burning butt. It checks out.

a LOT of recipes from this vague stretch of millennia over the mediterranean world, btw, start with the instruction to melt some tail fat and then brown whatever you’re cooking in it.

The funny thing is that the “small waisted Victorian” was actually a COMPARATIVE thing. The victorian (and Edwardian) ideal is a waist that’s 15-10 inches smaller than the bust.

If you look closely at a lot of Victorian imagery (esp the adult China dolls) you’ll find a LOT of double chins – at least for women. The ideal woman was (and this is sexist as hell but) a successful mother and a successful mother was rounded and plump from multiple pregnancies.

Anyway, a really cool image I have is an ad from the Victorian era that really shows how ideals have changed;

As far as the clothing goes: a LOT of what we have left are the garments of young, rich women (like, premarriage age) and garments from special occasions – so debuts, weddings, special parties – because, like how a lot of women now will put aside their wedding dress, a well off young woman may have a dress made for a special occasion and never wear it again whereas most daily wear (much like with fat folks now) was worn until it fell apart.

Anyway, here are also some images of fat Victorians (sadly mostly women, I couldn’t find like any men that weren’t like, freak show photos which are kinda demeaning so not included)

I included the image with the group of women because look at that body type variety!

Also, Enchanted Rose Costumes on YouTube is a LOVELY plus size historical costuber and I highly recommend her!

Lovely addition!

“My time has come” I whisper as I open my image folder. Sadly none as cool as the lady balancing the teacups on her chest.

When an Ur guy / sells Nanni things / but the copper’s bad, / He simply records his complaint for all time / “I got a bad deal / I’m maaaaad”

My Favorite Things [Explained]

:/ kinda mean hearted

I love memetic communication when it gets to the point of being incomprehensible because can you imagine showing someone this picture

And asking them what Greek god it represents

#my favourite part is the people in the notes being like 'the god of children's hospitals' to be contrary#because the ball is Red#bc like. do. do they know what one of Apollo's areas of Being The God Of This Thing are?#healing and diseases#also he's like#the god of Youths#so like.yeah.#Apollo IS the god of children's hospitals actually Via @mothmammoth​

hi do y'all mind if i misuse this blog entirely for a second. idk why i'm asking i don't actually care they found a new snake it's a New Snake we didn't know about this snake before!!!!

NEW SNAKE HELL YEAH!!!!

hot damn this is so fucking great but the mild perturbation that snake expresses is deeply fucking funny

like you're moisturized, flourishing, in your lane, and this bastard noodly creature from Beyond shows up to flail it's many extraneous appendages around in sheer joy that you exist. and this is a little bit weird so you go to the next aisle over in the grocery store.

wheelchairs and canes and glasses and hearing aids and every single other disability aid should be free btw and if you disagree i hate you

Sybil Ramkin is one of my heroines though

She spends forty-odd years fat and single and obsessed with dragons and loving it and letting nobody give her any shits

And then she meets a dashing-if-drunken forty-something watchman and they think they’re too old for love but they are so, so, so wrong and their relationship starts with mutual respect and trust and grows into an incredible amount of love and affection

But she’s a fat goddess the whole time and there’s never anything wrong with that because the woman is a city

#Because she’s a fat female character who has literally zero jokes about her diet #All the jokes are about her HUSBAND’s diet #She’s vast because she’s highly-bred and her size makes her powerful #Role models yo

Discworld Heritage Post

The tailors at Colonial Williamsburg made a suit for their cat

The best part is that they were inspired by a diary entry from 1775, written by a 12 year old tailor’s apprentice who had been left unsupervised all day and decided to make a suit for a cat. Here’s a link to the blog post about it, but I’ll just paste the whole diary entry here:

“I had been at work about two months when Christmas came on – and here I must relate a little anecdote. The principal [the tailor] and his lady were invited to a party among their friends…while it devolved on me to stay at home and keep house. There was nothing left me in charge to do, only to take care of the house. There was a large cat that generally lay about the fire. In order to try my mechanical powers, I concluded to make a suit of clothing for puss, and for my purpose gathered some scraps of cloth that lay about the shop-board, and went to work as hard as I could. Late in the evening I got my suit of clothes finished; I caught the cat, put on the whole suit – coat, vest, and small-clothes [breeches] – buttoned all on tight, and set down my cat to inspect the fit. 

“Unfortunately for me there was a hole through the floor close to the fireplace, just large enough for the cat to pass down; after making some efforts to get rid of the clothes, and failing, pussy descended through the hole and disappeared; the floor was tight and the house underpinned with brick, so there was no chance of pursuit. I consoled myself with a hope that the cat would extricate itself from its incumbrance, but not so; night came and I had made on a good fire and seated myself for some two or three hours after dark, when who should make their appearance but my master and mistress and two young men, all in good humor, with two or three bottles of rum. After all were seated around the fire, who should appear amongst us but the cat in his uniform. I was struck speechless, the secret was out and had no chance of concealing; the cat was caught, the whole work inspected and the question asked, is this your day’s work? I was obliged to answer in the affirmative; I would then have been willing to take a good whipping, and let it stop there, but no, to complete my mortification the clothes were carefully taken off the cat and hung up in the shop for the inspection of all customers that came in.”

“I was hoping they’d beat me and forget about it but to my horror they stuck my work up on the fridge”

Not just any fridge-

The public fridge

Voyager is our Home.

U.S. conservatives always talk about creating jobs but get SO MAD whenever anyone mentions banning prison labor like imagine the insane ammout of jobs that would be created literally overnight if companies in your country had to actually employ people instead of using slave labor from people that got caught with weed 10 years ago.

Daily reminder that the US, who love to scaremonger about "communist labour camps," have legal slave labour if you're in prison

If this ain't me

Me, bleeding profusely from a missing leg as I’m being dragged onto the beach: THIS WAS A STATISTICALLY UNLIKELY OCCASION, IF THE SHARK WANTED ME DEAD I WOULD BE DEAD. SHARKS ARE IMPORTANT FOR THEIR ECOSYSTEMS I DO NOT CONDONE ANY ATTEMPTS TO HUNT THIS SHARK

if an animal kills me, that was on ME. it caught ME slackin. let it eat me

(Clawing at the dirt as underpaid EMTs drag me away from the scene) The measurement of danger in relation to any thing must be weighed against the level of ignorance of the party who wishes to accept known risk, and anything at all can be "safe" or "unsafe" given the correct set of variables, this easily could have been tainted grains or a vending machine mishap but that doesn't make for a strong headline now does it

This is no joke one of the most profoundly terrifying things I've ever watched

I physically flinched, goddamn.

he sees you when you're sleeping

HE KNOWS WHEN YOU'RE AWAKE